Back in the late 70's I was great friends with some guys who ran a VW repair shop. The primaries were two brothers and another guy who were all partners in the business and they had a couple more employees. They were all mechanics and my friend's brother was a master engine builder, the best ever.
My friend built a Karmann Ghia to race dirt track. That's what he wanted to do. Gloss black. That thing was gorgeous when it was washed off.
His brother built him the best engine ever to meets the specs. I think at that time at that track the maximum displacement for mini-stock was 1700cc with two one barrel carbs. I think, memory is clouded, but he was at the max, whatever it was.
He raced it for a whole year and never passed anybody. He was frustrated. We were sitting at my house drinking beer and he said he was seriously thinking about a totally illegally large engine just to see what it feels like to pass somebody, just one time for the fun of it.
And then he got a better idea. Tires. He went for a $400 set of dirt track race tires to put on it. That stressed his relationship with his wife. Plus he was spending all night every night at the shop after business hours working on the race car. Racing is a drug.
But he went out there the next year and won nearly every race with those tires. Won the track mini-stock championship. There he is, he made it.
The next year of course he wanted to do it again. and now his wife was getting REAL tired of it. She was a cool lady herself, she liked to wear a T-shirt that said, "Itty Bitty Titty Committee." You could do that back then without any social backlash. But she was getting tired of that race car thing.
She gave him an ultimatum - We're going to the beach together this weekend instead of you racing, or ELSE. The BIG else. So he gave in, and secretly got one of his employees to drive the car that Saturday night. The employee had a crapbox Bug of his own making slow laps. It's the car that won the championship at that track, not the driver.
So my friend's down at the beach on his second honeymoon and his employee drew the pole position for the main event. That car was faster than what he was used to. He took the green flag and made it through 1 and 2, but in turn 3 he went straight over the wall, through the fence and into the parking lot. I've never seen a car so wrecked, like a wad of tin foil. And he broke his arm.
My friend said that's the best favor anybody has ever done for him, to get rid of that race car for him.
The End.
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